Ramzes to Stand-in For NiP as They Drop Universe From Dota 2 Roster amid coronavirus outbreak

The unfortunate global pandemic had Saahil “Universe” Arora dropped from Ninjas in Pyjamas’ roster. The Indian-American player from Wisconsin used to play as a second support along with ppd for his former team.

Photo by Alex Maxwell via DreamHack

The organization announced that stand-ins Roman “Ramzes” Kushnarev and Milan “MiLAN” Kozomara are to replace Universe and the offlaner Rodrigo “Lelis” Santos, who might also be dropped from the squad due to the ongoing circumstances.

The team changes are due to the global lockdowns that are currently going on as a countermeasure to stop the spread of the Virus. NiP being a Swedish organisation, had to replace Universe – an American – and Lelis – a Brazilian – who would face obvious ping problems in European servers.

As announced by NiP on Twitter, “Due to the situation with COVID-19 and the consequent move to regional competition, we are forced to restructure our line-up in @DOTA2 to ensure continued practice and competition.”

They also didn’t forget to bid a goodbye to The International 2015 winner, “Thank you for everything @UniverseDota and we wish you all the best – It was a pleasure to work with you!”

Due to the situation with COVID-19 and the consequent move to regional competition, we are forced to restructure our line-up in @DOTA2 to ensure continued practice and competition.

Since Ramses previously played as an offlaner for EG, they might need to find another offlaner now due to the same reasons. In fact, with more and more tournaments being held online, many of the professional teams might need to make drastic changes to their rosters to cope up with the situation.